Newsletter - June 2015

Tarheel Sports Car ClubHeel & Toe Newsletter

June 2015

Sponsor Spotlight

Chris Schimmel, owner and fabricator of Competition Cages, is a long time THSCC club member and supporter, known throughout the Southeast for providing quality rollbars and cages at great prices. Give him a call to discuss your racecar project!

About the Heel of the Month Award

"The Heel of the Month Award was started in 1993 to honor one or more THSCC members each month for his/her recent outstanding driving or for recognition of some special or notable action recently performed either within the club or outside of the club."

June Heel(s) of the Month:

For June, we would like to recognize two individuals, both longtime club members and contributors. Recently putting forth great effort to put on our famous Chick School autocross event for many ladies. These two folks helped organize the event, instruct at the event, and even helped to sponsor the event. It was a great success and many ladies improved their autocross skill, so we would like to recognize Jennifer Bedell and Chris Peterson as joint recipients of the Heel of the Month in June! Thank you both very much!

Don't forget to join us for our monthly Club Meetings on the second Wednesday of every month at Randy's Pizza on Miami Blvd in Durham!

In This Edition

June Update

Heel of the Month

Autocross Report

Rallycross Report

Track Report

June Update

Greetings from THSCC!

Summer motorsports are in full swing and we have some exciting events coming up. This weekend on June 27th & 28th we will be holding our 11th annual V Foundation for Cancer Research Benefit Autocross. This event is a great tradition within our club, and we are extremely proud that over the years with our charity autocross events we have raised over $50,000 for cancer research. We look forward to continuing the tradition this year, so please join us and enjoy two days of autocross at our favorite Danville Regional Airport. As always, we will have great raffle prizes thanks to our sponsors, with all proceeds from the event going directly to the JImmy V Foundation.

Also, mark your calendars for the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship event at VIR on August 22-23. This is a great spectator event and opportunity to watch some professional racing at a great track. There are some exciting supporting races throughout the weekend as well, so we encourage you to make a weekend of it and bring the entire family. As a special bonus, we are working on some perks for attending THSCC members. Look for these details in the July newsletter and on our club website soon. For more information about the TUDOR event and to buy your tickets, please visit VIRnow.com.

We hope you're having a great summer so far and look forward to seeing you at an event soon! If you have any questions about any of our events as always please don't hesitate to email me at the link below.

Autocross Report

May saw the return of the once-every-other-year-except-when-we-forget tradtition of the all female autocross school we affectionatly (and politically incorrectly) call the "Chick School". Put on by 3 spectacular long time active contributors to THSCC, this event was very well received and much fun was had by all. As in years past, no male instructors or staff were allowed on site. We'd like to take a brief moment to than Chris Peterson, Gwen Habenicht, and Jennifer Bedell for the hard work they put into this, along with the sponsors from the event: Pet's Companion Inn, Atomic Empire, Cline Hall Insurance, and Steps for Recovery.

Following the Chick School was our 4th points event of the year at Danville Regional Airport. Top PAX time for a fendered car went to our own Eric Peterson, pulling out an impressive 8th fastest raw time in an E-street car. STR was a very tight race, the most notable finisher frmo THSCC being Steven Carter, taking home 2nd place in STR. Steven managed to split the codrivers of the famed "Torquemonster" of Michael Licursi, actually beating the car owner, and less than a tenth behind Mike Casino.

The C-street battle continued to be a compelling one to watch, with Lee Williams taking home the win over Matt McGrain, making the season points even more interesting. This is our tightest class, and may come down to participation being a KEY factor given the large number of events on the schedule this year. Karl Shultz continues to learn how to drive his new baby shuttle, and we saw the return of long time members Carl and Emmie Fisher in HS who learned that the class has come a long way from being the Mini dominated class it once was. Young gun Aaron Skolnik continued his domination of that class, holding of Rob Lupella despite the additional 60+ hp that Rob had on board.

D street prepared was an interesting battle between two relatively new members in drastically different cars. Sean Foley pulled out the win in his 2013 Mini Cooper GP over Daniel Owen in his DSP prepared Acura Integra by only .172 seconds. CAM proved to be a battle of Mustangs with a very intriguing entry finishing 3rd, a 1949 Chevy pickup slotting in behind former presidents Rodney Wright and Stephen Westerfield. Aaron Delong and Zach Hill showed up to shake out their Chump Car Integra, and despite a very aggressive classing (SMF) for the car, finished quite well, with Aaron actually taking home 2nd place.

Last, but certainly not least, our novice class had spectacular participation with 17 entries.Chad Culbertson continues his march towards what looks to be a novice year end trophy with a solid 4th place, with Geoff Sutton in 3rd, Cicero Sykes in 2nd despite the rough AS PAX and Garreth Holl takes home the win in the F-street BMW M3. All in all, a smoothly run event with 5 competition runs and great fun had by all.

June means our Jimmy V fundraiser event is coming up, June 27 and 28 in Danville. This will be 2 seperate points events. As usual, it will include our fabulous prize raffles including great stuff from Discount Tire, Flow MINI, Blackforest Industries, Apex Performance, Rush Hour Karting, and many many more. The event is live on MotorsportReg so sign up for a great time. Remember, racing is awesome, and cancer sucks, so help us smash some cones to smash cancer!

Rallycross Report

Jeff Berlin making a cloud of dust at the June rallycross, Photo courtesy of Will Page, Will Page Photography

THSCC held the fourth rallycross of the year at the Wilson Fairgrounds on June 14. The temperature was high and the turnout was low but we had a great time anyway. A few folks left at lunch because of the heat but diehards stayed the entire day. The Duff guys brought out their Sentra with several cans of spray-paint and a sign that said “Paint this Car”. Kids both young and old had a great time painting it. Kevin Allen and Ray Metts competed for the fast times of the day as usual. Thanks to all who braved the heat to attend and to the folks who setup and broke down including Drew Sheffield and Nathan Miller who drove all the way from the other side of Charlotte; Kevin Allen and Ray Metts who set a fantastic course, Pete Guthrie, Ricky Beam who drove the THSCC bus and stayed over on Saturday night; and Charlie Guthrie who spent his Sunday evening on the tractor clearing up the ruts that we made during the day. Our next event will on July 12 at the VIR Euro rally course. We’re expecting a great turnout and a fun event. It’ll be smooth and fast.

Track Report

We just finished up our HPDE event at Carolina Motorsports Park, and if you weren't there, you missed a great event. The weather was particularly nice for this time of year in South Carolina, and everyone got plenty of open track time due to somewhat thin run groups. If you have never run CMP before, definitely put it on your list for next year because it is a very fun track, and we want to share the experience with as many folks as possible.

Registration is open for our John Mullis Memorial HPDE in September on VIR Full Course, so sign up early and often and tell your friends! We will also have another 2-hour Kart Enduro on Saturday night as well and there are still team spots open. We do expect both the HPDE and kart enduro to fill up, so be sure to register up early if you plan on attending. We will be doing deferred payment for both events as usual.

If you have any questions about our events or would like more information, please visit our website or email us at the link below.